Accident

It’s easy to forget that anything could happen, until something does. On November 11, 1979, a Sunday, I was working at my father’s horse farm on Vly Summit Road in Easton, New York, about ten miles south of Greenwich. I was a month past turning 30, and still trading a day or two a week for gas money and pickup repairs at my father’s dealership. My father and his new wife operated a breeding farm, only about fifty acres in all, with a two-story, log cabin-style house that he had built for himself and his new wife and her two young daughters after he left my mother. At the first bend of the driveway, there was also a long equipment shed that was open on one side, where he housed his tractor, his front loader, a low-boy trailer, and all the other farm equipment he needed.

That shed sat off to the right of the steep driveway, and straight ahead was his only horse barn, but it was a large, state-of-the-art, post-and-beam barn with a spacious hayloft and a manager’s apartment on the top. On the ground level sat the office, a tack room, a walking ring, and fourteen horse stalls. Fourteen was just enough to hold the pampered selection of mares and foals that were owned by wealthy Kentucky and Florida thoroughbred owners who wanted well-bred stock that could run in exclusive New York State-bred races. My father’s fancy log house rose up at the end of the gravel driveway.

A Saratoga sportswriter had already profiled the farm, saying,

“Patrick and his wife Evelyn are a serious and progressive pair, bringing a determined approach to the improvement of the breed, knowing first-hand about raising top horses in New York State. They have already foaled and raised award-winners: My Girl Eve, named for one of their daughters, just happens to own the track record at Belmont Park for five furlongs (58 & 4/5 seconds.

“My Girl Eve came from a crop of only ten foals– a high success ratio in itself – and the best of that group may be yet to come. Situated in the Cambridge Mountains, Vly Summit Farm is merely a furlong away from Willard Mountain.

“‘We bought the place in 1975,’ explains Patrick, ‘and as you can see, we built the paddocks around our home. Those ridges to the west really do protect us from the harsh winter winds, and our elevation keeps insects at a minimum. We’ve done the fencing, building, and everything else.’

“‘I hope you realize it wasn’t work,’ Patrick laughs. It is the satisfied laugh of a man totally immersed in thoroughbred racing. Why would a man who was a successful automobile dealer (Bumstead Chevrolet in Troy) do all this?

“’I love horses,’ he says. ‘I’ve been going to the races at Saratoga since I was eight years old, and now I’m headed toward sixty. That tells you how long I’ve been following this game.’”

My father loved horse racing, but he didn’t know much about horses, so he found a guy in his mid-fifties named Warren Rodman to be his farm manager. Warren had grown up around Greenwich, but he had moved out West when he was a young man and became a cowboy. He had stayed out there for thirty years, riding in rodeos, breaking stock, and mending fences for ranchers in Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico. He had only been back in New York State a few years, working on a local road crew, when my father heard about him and offered him the job. Within a year of Warren going to work for him, they had become best friends.

Most of the farm’s fifty acres that wasn’t too marshy from the creek that wound through the lower third of the property was fenced off for their seven paddocks, and each paddock was supposed to have its own run-in shed for the horses. That November, there was only one paddock that didn’t have a finished shed, in the field to the immediate left of the driveway entrance, and Warren and I were digging holes for its corner posts that Sunday morning.

My father and his wife weren’t there. They had driven down to Troy to be with his wife’s daughters at Emma Willard School, so Warren and I were working alone at the farm. It had rained all through the night before, and it was still drizzling in the morning as we started on the post-holes. It was pretty cold, about forty degrees, and the ground was slick. The wet air wormed its way inside my skin and coated everything I had to grab onto.

Warren had driven the old Ford tractor up near the top edge of the field, fairly close to the road, and we were using the tractor’s power take-off to run a twelve-inch auger. The vertical auger stood maybe five feet high with its tip on the ground, and the horizontal shaft from the power take-off hooked into it and made it spin. There was a bolt sticking out at the connection point, spinning right along with the takeoff shaft, and you couldn’t reach too close to it or it could grab your glove and probably rip the skin right off your knuckles.

Warren was sitting on the tractor, feeding it gas and working the controls, and I was steadying the auger inside the holes as it churned down through the slippery dirt and rocks.

Land in the foothills of the Adirondacks isn’t much different than the rock-filled soil in Vermont or New Hampshire, and it made for slow digging. We hit our share of stubborn shale layers that morning, and some larger, harder rocks, too. We’d get down through good dirt a foot or so and then the auger would start to bounce on a stone, and I’d have to bear down harder until it split, or shift the tip from side to side and maneuver the auger’s spinning blade under an edge of the rock and churn it up and out of the hole. It was pretty tedious work, and the rain didn’t make it any easier. By 11 A.M., we’d only finished half the holes. The rain had gotten steadier, and it was tough to get much purchase on anything.

Finally, I hit a stone that wouldn’t budge, no matter what trick I tried on it. Warren climbed down off the tractor and planted himself next to me, on my left. There was a curved, yellow steel bar above the spinning takeoff shaft, and Warren grabbed hold of that with both hands and pulled down hard. I kept shifting the auger from side to side, bearing down on it right above the hole, occasionally eyeing the exposed bolt on the takeoff junction box so I didn’t get too close.

Suddenly, Warren barked out a weird sound, halfway between a surprised grunt and a nervous laugh. I looked over at him, but couldn’t figure out at first what was wrong. Then I saw that the connecting bolt had latched onto his denim jacket. He was leaning back, slamming his boot heels into the mud to get some traction, and pushing away from that bar, all at once. The takeoff shaft had stopped spinning, but the caught bolt kept tugging, trying to free itself, tightening its hold on him. The tractor engine sputtered with the strain. I jumped over and tried to pull Warren’s jacket off, but he hollered, “Get the tractor.”

I ran to the tractor then, searching frantically for the key to shut the engine off, but I couldn’t find it. My father was always worried about accidents and liability on the farm, and he didn’t want me running his equipment, so he had never shown me how to work that tractor. So, I jammed all its levers back and forth to kill the power, but nothing worked.

By then, relentlessly efficient, the bolt had chewed its way through Warren’s jacket. His boots kept slipping in the mud. I scurried back and grabbed onto him, reaching around him from behind to help yank him free, but then the bolt lodged in his skin and hauled him up off his feet. The space in between that overhead steel bar and the takeoff shaft was maybe eighteen inches, and Warren was forced through that space twice, bent double, twisted and choking out an involuntary, strangled howl as he hurtled around. As he was dragged up and through, his legs kicked me backwards. I landed on my left ankle and twisted it sideways.

Warren lay on his back under the takeoff shaft, which was humming again. His coat and shirt had been ripped off and the wadded-up, bloody shreds of them were still snared on the connecting bolt and spinning around on the shaft, although they had wrapped firmly there and only part of the shirttail was slapping against the metal as it spun. Warren wasn’t moving, but I could see his eyes were open, and I called out his name, twice. He didn’t answer. I saw his mouth twitching a little, and I knew, even if I was plunging quickly into shock, that he needed some serious help, and fast.

I couldn’t tell what was wrong with my ankle. I didn’t think it was broken, but I couldn’t put any weight on it. I think in that instant I was hoping it might be broken, maybe because Warren was so badly injured he couldn’t move anything but his eyes, and I felt somehow responsible. I wasn’t able to shut the tractor down, or drag him off when he was caught on the spinning bolt, and maybe the pain of realizing that could be lessened if I was badly hurt. Maybe I wanted to be a victim, too, to ease my guilt. I don’t know. Even now I don’t know all of what’s true about that day, but I do know that I was kneeling there in the mud, scared and shaking, listening to the tractor churn along, and I knew something irrevocable was happening. I was sure I couldn’t walk up to the barn office, where the closest telephone was, so I crawled.

Most rural communities like Greenwich and Easton have volunteer firefighting companies, made up of dedicated men and women who often have day jobs. They don’t get to stay at their stations during their shifts, and they have to drive usually long distances twice – first to the station to get their emergency vehicles, and then to the site of the emergency itself. Those country distances make for long response times, and that morning the volunteer ambulance didn’t reach us for about forty-five minutes.

After I made the call, I crawled back out, took off my coat, and covered Warren up. He still couldn’t move at all. It was still drizzling, and after the tractor ran out of gas, the rain made a terrible, piercing sound as it hit the mud. In that waiting time, I remembered the story Warren had told me about being stomped at a rodeo outside Tucson. The mustang he drew charged out of the gate and slammed itself against a wall, knocking Warren out of the saddle. As he lay there, dazed, he watched the horse spin back around and slam one front hoof down into his ribs, snorting, staring down at Warren when he did it. It took two rodeo clowns and another cowboy to keep the horse from doing it again. I wondered if Warren were remembering that, too.

Warren’s eyes were open but glassy, aimed vaguely at me, and I held my hand above his face so the rain wouldn’t fall into his eyes. A thin line of blood started at the corner of his mouth and wouldn’t stop. He tried to talk, but he couldn’t get any words out, and the blood gurgled in his throat when he tried. “I’m so sorry,” I kept repeating, saying it wouldn’t be too much longer before the rescue squad got there.

When the volunteer EMTs did arrive, they were shocked. It was two older men, in their early sixties maybe, and they stood over the two of us and just stared for a minute. They never even asked me what happened. Then they pulled a collapsible stretcher out of the ambulance, but they couldn’t figure out how to assemble it. Impatient and hysterical with grief and my own pain, I screamed at them: “What the hell is wrong with you? You can’t put your own fucking stretcher together? How are you supposed to get him into the ambulance?”

So, I grabbed the stretcher out of their hands and threw it together myself. I shouted for them to help me pick Warren up, but they were afraid to move him. They wanted to wait for the head of the rescue squad, who was a paramedic. He was on his way, they said. They were only First Responders. “Maybe this guy’s back is broken,” one said. “Who knows what’s wrong with him? We should wait.”

I wasn’t about to let Warren lay there in the cold mud any longer. I reached under his legs and his back to lift him, but his back was too soft, too wet, and what bones there were seemed to shift and move away from my hand as I eased him off the ground. His eyes rolled up and then back and I could see only whites there as I laid him onto the stretcher.

A crowd of neighbors had gathered by then, and they formed a loose semi-circle around us. I hadn’t even noticed them. But by then the paramedic had finally arrived. He was much younger than the others, maybe in his mid-thirties, a strong, fit-looking guy with a dark beard and wearing a red flannel coat with a hunter’s tag on the back. He had a worried look on his face. He immediately grabbed one end of the stretcher and I picked up the other. I was limping on my ankle, trying to hop and not caring about how much it hurt as I carried Warren over to the back of the ambulance, and I was too angry to let either of the older men come near him.

After we loaded him in back, I climbed into the passenger seat in front, and we drove out and started toward the closest hospital, Mary McClellan in Cambridge. The rest of what happened was a montage of surreal images: the paramedic in back started CPR on Warren; when the driver slowed for a black, barking dog in the road, I hollered through my tears at him to run the son of a bitch down and hurry up; a little later, the paramedic slammed his fist into Warren’s chest, twice, and cursed; the doctor who was waiting at the emergency bay of the hospital turned away and winced before he reached up to help the paramedic pull out the stretcher; Warren’s wife, dazed, put an arm around my shoulders and assured me over and over that it couldn’t have been my fault.

In a while, my father arrived, visibly grief-stricken and looking for answers. He said he found a note tacked to his door and wanted me to tell him exactly how it had happened, but I was crying too hard to talk about it. He never even asked why I was in a wheelchair. And my wife, Holly, finally showed up, and gasped when she looked at my ankle. Jolted into a posture of basic concern, she knelt in front of my wheelchair and held both my hands and swore quietly how glad she was it wasn’t me who was dead.

I just stared at her, remembering the Bahamian guy sauntering out of our room at Club Med on Paradise Island a couple of months before. We had gone on a beach vacation to take stock of our open marriage, and to understand why it wasn’t working. After all, weren’t we part of the Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice devotees, the we-know-better Baby Boomer love generation, vocal proponents of the new DIY marriage revolution? We didn’t need a Gestalt therapist or a hot tub at Esalen to manufacture different partners. Sex should exist as a shared hobby, a convenient pastime, right, as a purely physical act with anyone who crossed our paths? Why let messy emotions get mixed up in it? That was the core idea, anyway, and we had embraced it for the last couple of years as an alternative to splitting up.

But as I sat there with my ankle throbbing, trying not to look toward the trauma room where they were still working on Warren, an image of all my wife’s lovers lined up before me as I searched her face: first came the wormy co-worker at Hemmings Motor News in Bennington, followed by my former friend and fellow woodworker, Jeffrey, who had camped out with Holly in my own bedroom one night after a craft fair. Behind them came the ex-soldier she spent some weekends with in Boston, coming home glowing afterwards, dying to discuss with me how amazing he was. And finally, the lanky, brown Club Med counselor. She had promised to meet me at the pool near the lobby, where I had waited for half an hour before heading back to the room. I stopped short on the footpath, stricken when I saw him emerge from our room, brushing back his hair.

Truth be told, she was better at open marriage than I was. For her, it was just sex. She could screw someone, arrive back home happier, and resume her life. I couldn’t do that. I guess I hoped every affair could become a real relationship, giving me whatever it was I thought I was missing with Holly. What was I looking for? In that moment, in that hospital, I had no idea, but I knew that Warren’s death had changed everything.

Finally, after they had wrapped my ankle and pulled a sheet over Warren’s head, I saw the two older paramedics sitting on a bench outside the operating room. As I passed them, I heard them telling each other there was nothing more they could have done, nothing anyone could have done, that the internal injuries were too massive, that’s what the doctor told them, that they had done their best, everybody who was there could see how hopeless it was.

I spent weeks unable to speak about that day, except for one time. My father drove me over to Warren’s house the night of the accident and insisted I go in alone and explain everything to his wife and children. I can’t remember what I said, or how I even made it up their stairs, but I do know all of them seemed to care for me. Nobody inside that house blamed me for a minute.

And for a few months, I had to be careful when I was driving, because Warren’s glassy eyes would suddenly appear and block my vision. I’d have to pull over and sit on the roadside for a while until the memory faded. But, most of all, I stayed angry about those older volunteers, as if their rationalizations for incompetence were somehow the cause of Warren’s death. He had been alive when they arrived, right? If they had just been faster, well then, we might have saved him. That’s what I kept believing, needing someone else to blame, for a long time.

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The Post-Star

Tue, Nov 13, 1979

EASTON MAN DIES

In another area fatality, Warren Rodman, 57, of Kenyon Road, Easton, died Sunday afternoon in a farm accident on Freeman Road in Easton. Washington County Police said his clothing became entangled in a mechanized post-hole digger.

Washington County sheriff’s deputies said Rodman, foreman on the Jim Patrick horse farm, was operating a post-hole digger on a farm tractor when the accident occurred. Rodman attempted to apply his body weight to dig a better hole and his clothing got caught in the machinery.

---

Before the first insurance interview, my father sent me a note:

Bill,

As I said to you on the phone, we can’t worry about this thing because nothing is going to change it. Call the shots just the way you remember them.

Love, Dad

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This is Jeff Horr with the Commercial Insurance Division of Aetna in Albany, New York, interviewing William B. Patrick over the telephone on 12/18/79 at approximately 8:30 A.M., concerning an accident which occurred on or about 11/11/79 at the farm of James K. Patrick in Washington County, Cambridge, New York.

Q: Mr. Patrick, do we have your permission to record this interview?

A: Yeah, sure, go ahead.

Q: Would you state your name and address?

A: William Patrick, Arlington, Vermont.

Q: And your age?

A: 30 years old.

Q: Telephone number?

A: 802-375-6981.

Q: Are you married?

A: Yes.

Q: What is your occupation?

A: I’m a woodworker.

Q: Woodworker?

A: Mm-hmm.

Q: Who are you employed with?

A: I’m self-employed.

Q: Okay, where were you at the time of the accident?

A: Ah, I was at the farm, working.

Q: I see. You were working for your father?

A: Yeah, I was.

Q: As an employee?

A: No, I’m not an employee of my father.

Q: You are?

A: I am not an employee of my father.

Q: Okay. At the time, what specifically were you doing?

A: I was . . . we were drilling, ah, a post-hole to put a fence post in for a new paddock up by the road, and I was bearing down on the, ah, the power auger. I was pulling down on it to add some weight so it could cut better.

Q: Who is Warren Rodmay?

A: It’s Rodman, m-a-n.

Q: M-a-n.

A: And Warren Rodman is the man who was killed.

Q: And what was he doing?

A: He was working next to me.

Q: And at the time, what specifically was he doing?

A: He was . . . he had been working on the tractor, sitting up on it and it’s . . . whenever the digging got hard, caught on a large stone or something, the man running the tractor would come down and help by applying more pressure to the top bar of the auger. If we both pulled down on it, it would be able to break through sometimes.

Q: Uh-huh.

A: Yeah, the bar, it’s above you, and you have to pull down on it. The bar is horizontal, and the auger is vertical. It’s vertically drilling down into the ground.

Q: Okay, it’s for guiding the thing. I mean, can you, can you dig a hole without anybody being around the post-hole digger?

A: No.

Q: So, Warren was originally operating the tractor?

A: Right.

Q: Okay, and then he got down to help you apply pressure to the post-hole digger?

A: Right, sure, like I said before.

Q: Now do you know how he was injured?

A: Um, well, he got caught in the machine, got caught on the power take-off somehow and ah, spun around it.

Q: And when he spun around, did it . . . how did he go, completely over top of the machine?

A: Well, no. Um, without seeing the machine, it’s probably hard for you to visualize the set-up of it. Most large farm tools have a power take-off which runs from the back of the tractor to whatever tool you’re using.

Q: Okay.

A: This particular tool, the auger, had a power take-off which came back and there was, um, there was an arched metal arm. That was essentially the structural part of it, and that’s what we were bearing down on and which connects above the auger.

Q: Alright.

A: We were standing there, yeah, pulling down on that steel arm, you know, next to each other and, um, Warren had a loose denim jacket on. He had this worn denim coat and, ah, I didn’t, for a minute I didn’t see. I didn’t understand what was happening because, um, it was raining and very slippery. We were in mud up to our ankles and, ah, he started to lean back away from the arm, but that was normal because we had to bear down so hard. I thought he was pulling down on it until I realized he was caught. I realized it but I couldn’t see how he was caught because I was a little behind him. As soon as he started slipping under the bar, I grabbed him. Do you want me to go on like this?

Q: Yes.

A: Telling what happened?

Q: Yes, yes, yes.

A: Okay, I grabbed him around the waist as he was being pulled toward the power take-off. I was trying to get him away from the machine, and he was pushing with his legs at the same time but I could feel his coat tightening, and I saw his feet slipping.

Q: Uh-huh.

A: Then all of a sudden, he, the machine was winning, drawing him in, and he bucked. I can’t remember whether he bucked and hit me with his back or with his waist or what happened, it was too fast, but I flipped backwards as he was pulled farther and harder toward the spinning bar and I wrenched my ankle at that point. I tried to get to the tractor to turn it off but there was no key in the ignition and while I was searching for another way to shut it down, Warren was yanked between the power take-off and the arched arm, pulled around it a couple of times and then thrown on the ground underneath. He was finally clear of the machine, but the damage had been done.

Q: Uh huh, because I know according to the report that I have, he died of internal bleeding. Do you know, would that be his chest area or would you know?

A: This is . . . this is, what was so difficult about it, because when he was thrown clear, the clothes on the upper half of his body had been ripped off. The shirt and the, and his coat had been pulled off and I took my shirt off and put it over him because it was cold, still raining, but I, you know, I didn’t know whether to move him or not at that point, and I looked at him to see what was wrong. His right arm had been wrenched and looked like it was broken, but there wasn’t a compound fracture, no bones sticking out.

Q: Mm-hmm.

A: And no ribs sticking out either, or shoulder blades. There wasn’t a great deal of blood but there was some leaking from his mouth. I had no idea what was wrong but I knew he wouldn’t last long, either.

Q: Was he able to speak with you?

A: No, he wasn’t able to say anything. I didn’t move him, you know, because I thought if he had a broken neck or back, which I couldn’t determine, I didn’t want to chance moving him.

Q: Was he conscious?

A: He was conscious, yes, he was, while we were waiting, because he kept looking at me. He lost consciousness just before we got him in the ambulance, though.

Q: Uh-huh. Now he, how far away was he thrown from the machine?

A: Hardly at all, under it. He was thrown under it.

Q: Okay, can you pinpoint exactly what part of the machine got ahold of his coat?

A: I’m not entirely sure about that. It was far down the power take-off arm, right next to, to the auger, the spinning part, because that’s where he, he was standing right next to me, we were shoulder to shoulder, and frankly, I didn’t see the part of the machine that caught him at first, and afterwards I was just in shock and just thinking about Warren.

Q: How deep of a hole does this machine cut?

A: Three feet maybe, or four, depending. Like I said, the auger is maybe five feet high.

Q: And when it, how far had it already cut?

A: Maybe halfway down, at the time, when it hit the rock. Kind of hard to remember about, you know, how deep the hole was. The accident was so violent that it, it really, a sense of perspective gets totally ruined.

Q: But you feel it was the power take-off that was spinning around that caught hold of him, some part of the takeoff?

A: Oh yeah, that was the only thing that was moving.

Q: Is there a guard on that?

A: Inside that, and where it joins the junction box is the only exposed moving part, so I pretty much assume that’s what caught him.

Q: The junction box would be?

A: Oh look, I don’t, you see, I really don’t know much about tractors, so whatever we’re talking about is going to be in lay terms.

Q: The connection between the takeoff?

A: The connection between the power take-off and the auger itself is made with this, in a kind of a rectangular box, a welded box, which sits right before the auger. I really don’t know any more technical details about it.

Q: Okay, okay, I understand. That will be enough. Thank you for speaking with me.

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May 8, 1980

Irene (Betty) Rodman
Kenyon Road
Greenwich, New York 12834

Dear Mrs. Rodman,

WARREN RODMAN-VS-JAMES K. PATRICK-DATE OF ACCIDENT: NOV. 11, 1979 – FILE: RLO CC 5495614  RG

Our investigation of your husband’s accident of November 11, 1979 while on the job, leads us to believe that it was caused by the negligence of other people. Under these circumstances you have the right to start a legal action against them to recover damages for your husband’s death.

We, as your husband’s employer’s insurance carrier, would have a right of lien on any recovery that you might make to the extent of our actual payments of Compensation and medical benefits paid out, in accordance with the provisions of Section 29 of the New York State Worker’s Compensation Law.

This letter is to notify you of these rights and to advise you that if you have not yet started action, and do not start it within 30 days of the date of this letter, then we will have forfeited your right to do so and then we, as the Worker’s Compensation insurance carrier, would then have the right to do so in our name. If we are successful in making any recovery, you would be entitled to two-thirds of any amount of our lien and the reasonable and necessary expenditures incurred in effecting this recovery.

We ask that you advise us in writing of your intentions in this matter regarding legal action within thirty days.

Sincerely,
Janice SanFilippo
Worker’s Compensation Specialist

                                                

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May 12, 1980
Greenwich, New York

Dear Billie,

            Today I received a letter from the Aetna Casualty and Surety Division. Copy enclosed plus my reply.

            In light of the continuing complexity of the situation concerning Warren’s accident and death, I wish you to know that I am devastated by the sudden and tragic loss of Warren. It was my privilege to have shared his life and love for thirty-six years. This will sustain me. However, I hold no one to blame.

            I am appalled and ashamed at the callousness of others to cause grief in their greed for money.

            The Aetna Company is paying me $109.33 per week compensation until I take Social Security (I am fifty-five) and then this amount will be reduced.

            No amount of money can compensate for a person’s life but I would gladly forfeit any sum to have Warren here.

            I am truly sorry for any anguish this situation may cause you.

            Sincerely,
            Betty

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May 12, 1980
Greenwich, New York

Aetna Life and Casualty
Casualty & Surety Division
41 State Street, P.O. Box 1521
Albany, New York 12201

Ms. Janice San Filippo, Compensation Specialist

Dear Ms. San Filippo,

I am in receipt of your certified letter of May 8^th, 1980, requesting my intentions, in writing, regarding my starting legal action against James K. Patrick to prove negligence against him and others to recoup damages for my husband’s death, and in that regard I am enclosing a copy of letters sent to those I know to be involved in this matter and I wish to advise the Aetna Casualty & Surety Division via and including you –

                        “TO GO FUCK YOURSELF.”

Thank you for your concern.

Sincerely,
Irene L. (Betty) Rodman
Mrs. Warren Rodman

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We never actually know what will happen, do we? I didn’t know, for instance, that five years later I would take a bus from Boston to Albany to be deposed a second time, in a lawsuit about the same farm accident. Another of my father’s insurance companies – The Hartford – was suing itself. The division that handled machinery was going after the liability division because – well, why else? Neither of them wanted to pay, and none of the employees wanted to lose their jobs.

On that bus trip, the driver stopped at a railroad crossing and opened the bus doors in front. An old man was standing there and I made a note that he looked just like Warren. As the driver closed the doors and started away, the old man began to wave, but then turned it into a salute.

Nor did I know that a year after that, I would visit the Owl Pen Bookstore outside Greenwich, New York, and find my first book of poems, Letter to the Ghosts, for sale in that remote, used bookstore – the very copy I had given to the Rodmans right after it was published, the one with the inscription that read, simply,

For Warren & Betty, All the Best

 Bill Patrick

            And of course, even back then, standing in front of the poetry section, staring at the signed title page of my book, I couldn’t know that I would write a poem called “An Accident” on November 11^th, 1989, the tenth anniversary of Warren’s death.

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                            An Accident


I wish I could make this not true -- this story
of what happened so many years ago today.

My father owned a thoroughbred horse farm then,
fifty acres of low mountain valley

that he had bulldozed and fenced and paddocked off.
He backhoed the trenches for lines and pipes,

set each locust post, laid his hand on every rail.
I had my own land and house half an hour away.

Once a week I'd drive over to help him out,
for gas money, but for time to work beside him, too.

Building his dream-farm wasn't breeding horses, though,
and being a city boy who'd made good

enough to buy some fillies that won, now and then, 
just got him inside the right stable of friends.

A splay-footed gelding, a calf-kneed mare --
he couldn't tell how to avoid what at first,
so he found a farm manager who could.
Warren Rodman, back East from Arizona,

could peel a horse's skin off with one steady look,
survey its bone mechanics with X-ray eyes --

point of shoulder to knee, angle of fetlock to hoof.
He called the barn his Palace of Flies.

"If I die right now, I'll leave happy," he'd say.
"I've spent my days living most folks' dreams."

A few years in, they'd logged ten standing foals,
and every stall in the palace was filled.

The accident day was a Sunday, just like today,
with hard rain that made me wish I'd slept in.

Warren had the tractor in the top paddock, alone,
working the post-hole auger with the power take-off.

Post-holes wanted two pairs of hands, I knew that,
one to keep the running tractor steady

and one to hold the auger arm straight.
My father and his wife were down in Troy.

I couldn't work the tractors there. They worried
about insurance. I wasn't a legal employee.

So I set my stance wide to stand in the mud
and pulled down on the metal arm as the auger spun

and caught, slowed then, and bounced as if on rock –
bounced until I pried out a broad stone. Then it caught

and churned plain dirt down to past three feet,
when it found another and took to bouncing again.

I worked the point to what edges I could reach,
but the hole was deep and this stone too broad.

Warren climbed down, laughing, not to be mean
or show he was stronger. We both knew he was.

I'd seen him keep a stallion still with one hand.
He climbed down to help me get the job done.

We moved to one side and rocked the auger arm back
until the take-off bolt spun too close to see.

He was laughing still, and I could never tell
if he was serious or horsing around –

it was all the same for him. Then I heard him yell,
and saw his denim coat was caught on the bolt.

He braced his arms straight. He dug his heels in.
"Shut the tractor off," he shouted to me,

and I ran to it, but I couldn't find the key.
So I jammed every lever its opposite way,

and still it churned along. I ran back to him then,
and grabbed his waist. The take-off bar spun

against my knuckles and carried away the skin.
The mud wouldn't hold. We were both slipping under

when the bolt ate its way through his clothes.
There are some faces or words you can never lose.

His scream in that second ended up caught inside me.
Sorry. You need to see what was happening.

Between the auger arm and the take-off shaft
that a tractor spins to work an auger,

there's a narrow space, the size, I'd guess,
of a newborn baby – maybe a foot and a half.

Warren got pulled through that space twice
and then thrown on his back underneath.

I was jackknifed back when he started through,
landed wrong on my left ankle. Wrecked it.

I could hear his coat and shirt flapping, louder
than the tractor engine, until they wrapped tight

and got quiet. Warren, half-bare, didn't move.
I covered him with my shirt and crawled to a phone.

My father's farm was on Vly Summit Road,
and we waited there almost an hour for a rescue squad.

"We been trying to find you," they said.  "A maze of back roads."
They were right. It is. All of what I tell you is true.

Warren couldn't speak, but he did cough once,
and a steady, red line bubbled out and stayed.

I kept myself busy wiping it away.
I was crying, which I couldn't do much back then,

and saying I was sorry, over and over.
I know I told him, "Hang on. They'll be here soon."

No bones stuck out. The only part he could move
were his eyes, and he forgave me with them.


After a while, the tractor used up its gas,
and I could hear the rain dance on the mud.

I thought my father would come back again.
Then I remembered when I was seven

he would wake me in the dark for hockey, to play
Pee Wee Hockey. Us little guys played early,

6 or 6:30, and he made hot chocolate,
and he started the car to make it warm,

and I waited in our kitchen with the dark outside
until he hurried back in again for me.

When my father drove in after lunch, we were gone.
A neighbor had tacked a note up on his door.

That night he brought me over to Warren's house,
so I could tell his wife and kids how he died.

"Warren was my mentor. My, my, my . . .  friend,"
was what my father said. And wouldn't look at me.

He waited in the car, keeping it warm, I guess.
I angled my crutches up the stairs, knocked, and went in.

My father is still alive. Sometimes I see him.
I could read him this poem, and maybe he'd pretend to listen.

But he'd probably think, What can a poem change?
and those words would appear in a translucent red

across Warren's chest as he floated, smiling,
waving to me, through my father's eyes. 

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